I shoot colour neg, 1/3rd stop or more underrated, and put the roll through
the cheapest lab I can find (about £4 at the local chemist). The prints, I
give to my wife, and then I scan the negs, play with them in Photoshop and
print the occasional one on an Epson 880 (cheap, cheerful and better than
the labs can do). Mostly I just show them on the computer.
This week I shall be sending a few of my scanned files off for printing by a
lab - hopefully to get high quality prints.
Standard lab printing is not good but I've never yet had a truly badly
developed film back. I've found neg to have a number of advantages over
slide... easier to expose, easier to scan, the set of prints act as both big
contacts and as a colour guide and finally my wife gets a set of prints all
of her own.
I'm using a Nikon Super Coolscan and it has been able to get details off
both negs and slides which has surprised me...
regards
Ian
PS I've also scanned archived stuff although one downer is that all the
relatives and neighbours want their stuff copied and 'improved' now.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jon Mitchell
Sent: 05 December 2002 17:45
To: Olympus Mailing List
Subject: [OM] Developers - AAAAARRRGGGHH !
OK, so I've finally lost it with developers / processors. The prices they
are charging me are going up and up and the quality is getting worse. Now
I've recently acquired a very nice OM-4 from a list member (thank you,
anonimous enabler !) and love the fact that I can use the spot meter to
choose which area of the frame I want to meter from and get exposed
correctly. But WHAT IS THE BL**DY POINT IF THE D*MNED DEVELOPER AVERAGES
EVERYTHING OUT WHEN ITS PRINTED !!!!
Just had a very unpleasant argument with the girl behind the counter. She
kept explaining that the machine would take the average light reading across
the frame, and that it would be best for my pictures that way. I pointed
her to some of the prints that they had grossly over-exposed and expressed
over and over again that *I* will choose how I want my pictures exposed not
*HER* and certainly not a bl**dy *MACHINE* !!!! She still thinks that the
machine knows best. I GIVE UP !!!
Right now I can't see very many options available to me.
1) I can pay even more and have a pro-lab do my developing / printing (most
likely for the moment).
2) I can shoot slide film (good, but I would then want a slide scanner and a
good photo printer).
3) I can go digital (yeah, like I'd dump my OM's - NEVER !!!).
So for the moment I shall be having to pay 10GBP (I think that's a little
over 15 USD) for each film I want developed and printed 6x4.
Looking to the future a little more, I have been thinking of a slide / neg
scanner for some time now. I like the idea of scanning my pics in and being
able to display them on my PC / on the web. Scanning prints on a flatbed
scanner just doesn't quite cut it !! But if I am to dump prints altogether,
I would need a good quality printer to do my own photo printing. Doesn't
this start to get a little on the expensive side ? Not just the hardware,
but the consumables ?
I'm starting to seriously regret not buying that "minilab" I saw on Ebay a
few months back for 300GBP. Full colour processing machine. Good one too.
Would have taken up most of the lounge, and the smell in the house would
have been rather unpopular, but AT LEAST I WOULD GET THE RESULTS I WANT !!!
Anyway, returning to the Slide /Neg scanner issue. Some months back I
borrowed one off a work colleague to try out. A C*n*n I think. Scanned my
TOPE entry (flash photography - can't remember the TOPE number) with it, I
believe. However, I was unimpressed with it. Very unimpressed. Didn't
seem to have ANY amount of "dynamic range" in the tones at all. And the
colours were NOTHING like what I had on my prints (which back then were
quite good !) or what I expected from the negatives.
I am now loathed to splash out a lot of wedge (moolah, cash, whatever !) for
something without being sure that it is going to get me the kind of quality
I expect. I was sniffing around a M*n*lta (Dual Scan ?) for a while, but
never actually bought one. Then I heard (from my friendly enabler) that
he'd had a lot of troubles with one (like, returned 3 times within warranty
for a replacement !). Has anyone got any recommendations ? I know this one
comes up quite a lot, but would just like to know that what I was seeing on
the scanner I borrowed is not "the normal" but rather because it was a
couple of years old.
Well, thanks if you have read this far. I appreciate any advice anyone has
to offer. Sorry for the rant. It just seems to me that these days I can't
get any decent level of service or quality anywhere. It's like this nation
is being dumbed down. Everyone just accepts lower quality and doesn't
complain. It's happening everywhere, with everything. In the car I bought
6 months ago, poor build quality of the interior (bits of plastic falling
off allover the place !), very poor level of service from the garage.
Sometimes it just feels like I have to do everything myself.
Anyway, sorry for using your bandwidth !!
Jon
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